Jane has wrapped up your parcel of Books; and I employ these few instants to scribble you a line. Let me hope you arrived
safe that night by the “nearer road,” and are now busy with your Animal Magnetism. If the whisky-drinking Laird1 come near you, retire from before him, as from a Priest of Dagon, and seek refuge here. Nay, why have you left us? The instant you are free of Jamie, obey your first impulse to come back. We shall always rejoice to see
that gawsie [big, jolly] countenance; and I promise not to plague you any more about “setting up”;2 but leave you to set up or sit down, when and where you find most advisable.

These infatuated Blacks have not paid me a stiver yet: but I have written to dun them this night;3 and on the whole, shall make bold to draw on them for that twenty pounds, and give it you, at any hour you like. So pray understand this, and let us have no more summering and wintering of the matter.

We were at Dumfries on Saturday, and saw the Jeffreys: they arrived about seven at night; and the new Dean and I sat talking
of high and low matters till near two in the morning. The Dean of Faculty seems slowly coming over to “Mysticism,” were he
not long ago a vollendete Stümper [completely unreasonable man]! He told me I was “paradoxical,” yet “right in the main”; and “could preach very well, if they
would let me make my own religion.” At nine next morning, we breakfasted (all bug-bitten, and short of sleep); and the good
kind Deankin4mit Weib und Kind [with wife and child] rolled off towards Annan, and Wales, and London, and Heaven knows whither, amid, not the storms and the tempests of Night,
but the dags [mists] and the drizzles of Day. Shortly afterwards, it began to rain heartily, even violently; and we could not set out
on our return, till almost six at night. The afternoon, after morning sermon, we spent with Mrs Richardson;5 among all manner of Elgin Magazines, and L.E.L's6 Poems, and Dundee Couriers, and Literary Gazettes, and Poetasterism and Kleinstädterei [small-town affairs] of every colour and degree. She is really a good worthy woman; well bred and well intentioned; but dwells
in a habitation as of Bristol card, not of brick and mortar. She specially desired to see you, and enjoy your acquaintance,
when you settled in Dumfries; which, she thought, if you were “a man of talent,” offered free scope for you, thickly peopled
as it is with Doctors of no talent. Macdiarmid was from home, or I should have seen him too.

Since then I have been chiefly sleeping, and trying at waking intervals to make ready for writing at great length on Jean Paul. I must finish him before I stir. It seems to be settled that we are to go and see Edinr, and the Jeffreys, so soon as they return; which will not be for six weeks or so. Much as we talked, not one word was said
about Macvey Napier, or writing either Luther7 or “Articles”! Nay I believe the Signs of the Times8 will not be sent me, but I must borrow it; nor do I know when the work is to be out; but only that it is printing.

But on the whole, dear Doctor, “it is but fair to say”9 that I am very bilious, and languid, and must break off. Write me a little word, were it only to say that poor Jamie is ‘knitting.’
Tell my Mother that I did not half see her, when I was there; and will be back when I have got loose again. Alas! Alas! How souls are divided in this Earth!
I could almost greet [weep] when I think of it, would greeting do any good. Remember me in [ki]ndest love to all the rest, My Father, Mag, Jamie and them all.—Can you hear any tidings of Frank Dickson at the Lockerby
Fair? Will Grahame come to us; and will you come with him? “Have you any notion”? Good night! my dear Doctor! Excuse this
wonderful palaver, and accept it in good part.

I am ever, / Your true Friend & Brother, /

Thomas Carlyle—

I have written to Church, putting him off sine die [without fixing a future day]; also the matter of the white veil is fully explained from the “Craw that does not flee.”10

TC-JAC, [11 Aug.]. Addr: Scotsbrig, / Ecclefechan—. MS: NLS, 522.74. Pbd: Norton, L26–36, pp. 147–49, inc. Dated from the reference to the visit which John and Margaret had made to Craigenputtoch in late July and to the Saturday night, 8 Aug., when the Carlyles met the Jeffreys in Dumfries. See Wilson, Carlyle, II, 109.

3. Carlyle's letter to Black, Young & Young has not been found, but their reply, dated 17 Aug., acknowledges an indebtedness of £99 to Carlyle for articles in the Foreign Review, of which £10 had been given to John in London and from which £3.14.4 was deducted for books sent to Carlyle.

4. Henry Inglis had written to Carlyle on 1 June: “Have you heard that Jeffrey has given up the Edinr Review, and that MACVEY NAPIER is now the Editor! The former was made Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, which is, I believe, the reason of his resignation,
and may be called, I think, ‘selling his birthright for a mess of pottage.’ I would not have given up such a weapon to have
been made Dean of Barbary and Morocco. Jeffrey should have died as he had lived, and rather than have abjured his faith at his time of life, he should have planted himself in the midst of a vast funeral pile composed of all his magazines far
& near, and having fired the train, ascended to heaven on the same Pegasus that had borne him so gallantly on earth.— And
what a poor, worm-eaten, touch-wood structure will it now dwindle into under the contracting influence of its mongrel Editor;—
the mere paltry engine of a local party, instead of the voice of a true man to a free land.” Jeffrey was formally and unanimously
elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates on 2 July, a position which, according to his biographer Cockburn, “is merely a station of honour; but … the highest honour of the
kind that can be conferred in Scotland” (Life of Lord Jeffrey, 1852, I, 282). Carlyle recalls Jeffrey's “great pleasure” at the appointment and “my surprise at the real delight he showed in
this proof of general regard from his fellow Advocates” (Reminiscences, II, 256). Yet Jeffrey appears to have assumed his appointment as a duty. It was the commencement of a new political career.

Edward Irving had written to Carlyle on 30 May, expressing a critical view of what he thought was worldly ambition on Jeffrey's part: “Francis Jeffrey said you have not
enough of worldly wisdom[.] But Mr J. there is a wisdom of a higher and better kind which cometh from above. Oh yes but not for worldly purposes. Certainly
not but I love my friend and hope to see his affections set upon the things above. This short dialogue took place in the Advocates'
reading room between him & your humble servant.”

6. James Grant founded the Elgin Courier in Elgin, Morayshire, in 1827. He moved to London in 1833, where he founded other journals. Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38), poetess and novelist, used her initials as her pen name.

7. William Fraser had recently been urging Carlyle to write a book or an article on Luther for the Foreign Review, but Carlyle seems to have preferred to write for the Edinburgh Review. Actually, neither was ever written.